Kinds of Corporate Social Initiatives and major problems-challenges when designing a Corporate Social Responsibility Program

Those involved with the development of corporate social responsibility initiatives always face the problem of which kind of corporate programs about social responsibility to adopt. This is indeed a great challenge for a marketer and may lead to an unprecedented success or a complete disaster! Hence there is great need for a careful plan to be designed and be successfully integrated. Although there are several categories that social initiatives fall in, it is preferable for a company to choose one or more categories rather to implement many different programs which will likely cause little cooperation and may confuse the customers. A full descriptive study about different types of CSR initiatives is included in Kotler’s and Lee’s book: Corporate Social Responsibility. The writers group the most common CSR programs (those which fall into the corporate social responsibility concept umbrella) in 6 categories: cause promotion, cause related marketing, corporate social marketing, corporate philanthropy, social responsibility practices and employee volunteering. Also note that this categorization is not the only one. For example many companies choose to categorize programs in group of similar activities such as environmental activities etc. Or other companies implement social responsibility programs categorized according to the respective stakeholder. For each CSR category there are specific steps in creating the plan of action. Many of these steps are similar for different categories or even exactly the same.

The second more important decision, beyond what social issue should one get tied with, is if one should include partners (both for-profit or not-for-profit) and if so, what partners and what kind of partnership to tie? Partnerships can play a very important role in a CSR’s program success. Strong Partners can wield great influence upon pressure groups and consumers and thus they can reinforce the company’s brand name and add value for the firm. Moreover partners can link the company with several stakeholders, they can add validity and reliability to a CSR initiative and provide with the necessary know-how.